Urban Counterterrorist Sieges: The 2008 Mumbai Attack and Police (In)capacity The Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008 exposed key vulnerabilities in India’s defences against urban terrorism. Not only did it reflect an unprecedented degree of sophistication on the part of jihadist planners, but the attack also demonstrated that the Indian policing system was woefully inadequate for the task of combating suicidal assaults. This paper will provide an analysis of the tactical and operational aspects of the Indian security response, with a view towards identifying lessons which might be valuable for the international security community. Its findings are expected to be particularly relevant in light of similar attacks carried out in Europe, Africa and North America during 2013-16. The paper describes the actual conduct of security operations on the ground in Mumbai, during the period 26-29 November 2008. It studies the response of the Indian police, army, navy and National Security Guard and demonstrates that inter-force cooperation was severely lacking. Besides clear protocols for communicating situational updates and pooling crisis intelligence, counterterrorism in India lacked a coherent public relations doctrine. Together, these shortcomings contributed to the spread of panic and multiplied the disruption caused by the attack. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for improving police responses to future urban terrorist sieges. Keywords: Terrorism, Intelligence, SWAT, India, Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba Introduction Following the 13 November 2015 shooting rampage by ‘Islamic State’ militants in Paris, Western security agencies are paying close attention to the threat of ‘active shooters’. Unlike regular hostage- takers, active shooters are gunmen who randomly kill anyone they see and do not stop until cornered and arrested or shot by security forces. Europe and the United States have hitherto been insulated by geography and strict external border controls from such threats, which have a long and bloody history in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. But with the ongoing migrant crisis, as well as recurrent warnings from intelligence services that more ‘Paris-style’ active shooter attacks are being planned, there is a need to study such attacks in greater operational detail. The template that security forces across the world are concerned about however is not Paris, but the Mumbai attack of 2008 (known as ‘26/11’).1 There are usually two kinds of security crisis: that which is small-scale and appears suddenly, and that which is large-scale and appears slowly. But there is a third, rarer category: the large-scale security crisis that appears suddenly and confounds decision-makers. Certain terrorist attacks, like the jihadist assault on Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, fall into this category. Such attacks are highly destructive because they feature the use of innovative techniques by terrorists, which makes their impact more harmful compared to other incidents that unfold along previously witnessed, predictable lines.2 They do not fit neatly into one academic category or another. They partly represent urban warfare between individual irregular (ie. guerrilla) fighters and the security forces of established states, with elements of gangland-style killing conducted at close quarters, and a rage-filled desire to 1 One American analyst describes Mumbai as the ‘gold standard for how a small group of suicidal fanatics can paralyze a major city, attract global attention, and terrorize a continent ’. See Bruce Riedel, ‘Modeled on Mumbai? Why the 2008 India attack is the best way to understand Paris’, Brookings.edu, 14 November 2015, accessed online at http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/11/14-paris-attacks-mumbai-isis- terrorism-riedel, on 17 June 2016. 2 Assaf Moghadam (2013) How Al Qaeda Innovates, Security Studies, 22:3, p. 467. 1 experience ‘power’ by deliberately targeting unarmed civilians who are incapable of self-defence or retaliation. This paper shall describe how and why the Indian security forces responded on 26/11 in a manner that received considerable criticism, within India and abroad. It shall demonstrate that at the level of security practice, defensive measures remained static amidst a worsening threat environment. Little effort was made to harden Indian cities to cope with the kind of shooting rampage that was always possible but never thought likely. Because the attack did not fit any of the previously recognized patterns of jihadist activity, and thus defied easy identification, it posed a unique challenge requiring an improvisational response, one that was sub-optimal. The operational study of Indian counterterrorism is likely to be instructive for Western governments that face homeland security threats from radicalized members of immigrant populations, and well as returning foreign fighters from the so-called ‘Islamic State’. What happened? On the night of Wednesday 26 November 2008, ten Pakistani gunmen from the jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) landed on the Mumbai shoreline in a rubber dinghy. Splitting into five ‘buddy pairs’ they dispersed across the city. A short while later, they attacked simultaneously at five different locations, randomly shooting passersby while also planting time bombs in public places. Indian security forces took a full 60 hours to eliminate the last of the terrorists and bring the attack to a close. When the fighting was over, 166 civilians had been killed including 25 foreign tourists. The bulk of the deaths occurred within the first two hours. So the security response must be evaluated according to three criteria: 1) The number of dead 2) The length of time needed to reestablish control of the situation 3) The number of potential victims evacuated from the affected sites, while under imminent threat. Going by these criteria, public and academic criticism of the Indian security response may have only been partially justified. While there is little doubt that the attack represented a failure of preventive security, there are grounds for suggesting that security forces reacted promptly and, as far as threat perceptions were oriented until that point of time, professionally. Where they went wrong was in succumbing to collective paralysis caused by a failure of leadership, and relying on a top-heavy command system which denied police first responders freedom to carry out their jobs. Why did the attack happen? 26/11 was a state-sponsored attack, masterminded by the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).3 The actual planning was handled by at least 20 mid-level ISI officials. Final approval came from a former ISI chief, who was then commanding an Army Corps.4 Preparation was coordinated by a LeT operative named Sajid Majeed, who served as No. 2 in the LeT’s external operations division. Majid was also a liaison officer between the ISI and LeT and wanted to strike at a prestige target in India. His aim was to fulfill a long-standing ISI wish to damage the Indian economy, which was barreling from strength to strength at that point of time (2006-08). He accordingly dispatched a Pakistani- 3 For an academic treatment of this issue, see Arabinda Acharya and Sonal Marwah (2011), Nizam, la Tanzim (System, not Organization): Do Organizations Matter in Terrorism Today? A Study of the November 2008 Mumbai Attacks, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 34:1, pp. 1-16. 4 The information was provided to the author by a former US Central Intelligence Agency official in June 2011, and corroborated by a serving top officer of the Indian Research & Analysis Wing a few days later. 2 American named Dawood Gilani to reconnoiter possible economic targets in Mumbai, including the Taj Palace Hotel. According to US court documents, funding for the reconnaissance was provided by a serving ISI officer, holding the rank of an army major. Of US$ 29500 paid to Gilani, only $1000 was received from Sajid Majeed.5 The remainder came from the major. Gilani himself had been introduced to LeT by another serving ISI officer. For all intents and purposes therefore, LeT and the ISI cooperated so closely in planning and preparing for the Mumbai attack that any distinction between them disappeared. Sajid Majeed, coordinator of the Mumbai attack and liaison man between Pakistan’s ISI and Lashkar-e- Taiba (Source: Press Information Bureau of India)6 Ever since India partially liberalized its economy in 1991, the ISI had been focused on scaring away foreign investors through ‘false-flag’ or misattributed operations.7 The idea was to conduct cross- border terrorist attacks, which could then be plausibly blamed on indigenous Indian militants. There was to be no provable link to Pakistani territory. Through carrying out a number of such attacks, the ISI hoped to convince the international business community that India was a politically unstable state, riven by ethnic and religious conflict and thus offering few long-term commercial prospects. In March 1993, the ISI conducted a spectacular false-flag operation when it co-opted the Indian druglord Dawood Ibrahim to bomb 13 locations in Mumbai simultaneously. The final death toll was 257 – to date, the bloodiest terror attack in Indian history.8 However, the operation was not a complete success because only its first phase (the bombings) was executed. Phase II had envisaged armed assaults on multiple targets across Mumbai. For this purpose, the Pakistani agency had shipped several tons of military-grade explosive and assault rifles to Dawood Ibrahim’s gang. Unnerved by the chaos that the bombings caused, the would-be shooters decided to abort the second phase of the operation. 5 See indictment by Special July 2010 Grand Jury in US District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, available at https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/iln/chicago/2011/pr0425_01a.pdf, accessed on 17 June 2016. 6 For brief biographies of some of the key conspirators in LeT and the ISI, see http://pib.nic.in/archieve/others/2011/may/d2011050901.pdf, accessed online on 17 June 2016.